I was a failed teenage game developer (part 2)

(..continued from part one)

At around the same time that I was churning out crud like Quik-Ad Micro, I was beginning to take a healthy interest in the PC demo scene.  Mind you, the only exposure I'd had to the demo scene was a collection of MOD files contained on a PC magazine CD-ROM. So the only thing I actually understood about the demoscene was that you needed to have a truly awesome name for your 'group'. Therefore, if I wanted Bargosoft to be a QBASIC-powered force to be reckoned with in the elite world of "the 'scene", I would need to give it a suitably awesome 'scene name.

I pulled out a dictionary and started scouring the pages, looking for the perfect word. Something to rival Fairlight.. Future Crew.. Triton..  and so eventually I settled upon the rather dubious title of "HEATWAVE". It didn't take me long to realize that 'HEATWAVE' is actually a pretty terrible name for a demoscene group, so the search resumed for something cooler. For a brief period I decided upon "OPTICAL ILLUSIONS", but since that was too many letters for me to bother rendering in QBASIC code, I changed it to "ENTROPY".

A cool name deserves a cool logo.

Of course, what's a demoscene group without demos? With the name taken care of, I then proceeded to spend weeks producing awful, horrid demos, leading to what would be known as the Imphobia series. Actually, Imphobia is the name of some amiga 'scene magazine from years gone by, so I guess I was borrowing the title to lend it some sort of credibility. Viewing the demos now, of course, they almost seem like parodies of what a demo should really be.

Before the Imphobia series, however, were my humble beginnings as a wannabe demo writer. The first, GROOVY3.BAS, consisted of an seizure-inducing flashing background whilst the words 'PINK FLOYD' scrolled down the screen in alternating colours. In fact, just about everything I've ever written contains a section where the screen flashes random colours in a blinding manner. Perhaps it shall ultimately be my trademark as an artist once I've passed on.

The early fruits of my labour.

With my skills sharpened, it was time to move onto a real demo. The first Imphobia consisted of silly, mostly-random PC speaker music that played whilst the screen filled with basic ANSI graphics. Actually that's a half-truth, those two things didn't happen at the same time, since I had no idea how to do threading in QBASIC (or even if its possible). So the music would play first, then the screen would fill with ASCII, then another piece of music would play, then something else would happen, and so on. The grand finale was the display of the Bargosoft and Heatwave logos, followed by some crappy spiel about how awesome public domain software is.

In 1994, Future Crew released the legendary "Second Reality".  I released.. this.

The next three demos in the Imphobia series weren't much better, just featuring more elaborate graphics. In one of them I even introduced some goofy political point about how religion and nazism leads to nuclear war or something. Who the hell knows what I was thinking; to be honest, the only thing I can remember of my highschool years is the tragedy when I accidentally taped over my VHS copy of Fraternity Vacation with the Oprah Winfrey show.

It should've been called Imphobia 3-D.

Nuclear holocaust stunningly realised in QBasic.

I started inventing these stupid phrases to go along
with the gfx, thinking I was "deep".

In the next (and final) part : Bargosoft Game Studios is founded, but BISHTRONICS deals it a crippling blow..

(PS :Your reward for getting this far is yet another example of
 BARGOSOFT motivational imagery)